David Prentice was an English artist and former art teacher. In 1964 he was one of the four founder members of Birmingham’s Ikon Gallery. His work is hard-edged, abstract, close to the Op art of a period when young artists and architects were full of ideas for new beginnings.
For many years, his subject was the Malvern Hills, which he knew intimately from countless walks with sketchpad in hand. The forms of the hills were a constant, the weather constantly changing. He painted with the concern for structure and surface that had characterized his earlier work. The watercolors, often done on the spot, were more specific but the paintings done in the studio were as carefully constructed as ever.
In time his subjects expanded to include dramatic cityscapes of London, especially of the river, and the landscape of Skye, or rather its approaches.
I believe there are direct correlations between the work of David Prentice and Hiroshi Sugimoto. The key similarity is the attention to lighting and textures as appose to detail and displaying a landscape how we would usually see it. Instead, Prentice uses large brush strokes giving a faded/blury look to the landscape with emphasis on accurate depiction of light. Sugimoto focuses on using slow shutter speeds to bring about this faded look like Prentice does. Despite Sugimoto’s images being in black and white I believe there is a main focus on how lighting/weather can transform the similar landscape that he focuses on. Another key similarity in their works is the elimination of any man made features creating a difficulty in identification of a place.
Tom, in order to achieve exceptional marks in AO1 (level 6) you must extend your studies in all your artists references blog posts so far you must demonstrate wider knowledge and understanding of contextual/ critical references using direct quotes and others point of view in your analysis.
Follow these steps to success
For achieving higher marks research and analyse the work of at least 2-3 (or more) photographers/ artists. Produce at least 2-3 blog posts for each artist reference that illustrate your thinking and understanding using pictures and annotation and make a photographic response to your research into the work of others
– Produce a mood board with a selection of images.
– Provide analysis of their work and explain why you have chosen them and how it relates to your idea and the exam themes of FREEDOM AND/OR LIMITATIONS
– Select at least 2 key images and analyse in depth, TECHNICAL (lighting, camera), VISUAL (composition, visual elements) (interpretation, subject-matter, what is the photographer trying to communicate), CONTEXTUAL (art historical, political, social, personal), CONCEPTUAL (ideas, meaning, theory of art/ photography/ visual culture, link to other’s work/ideas/concept)
– Incorporate quotes and comments from artist themselves or others (art critics, art historians, curators, writers, journalists etc) using a variety of sources such as Youtube, online articles, reviews, text, books etc.
– Make sure you reference sources and embed links to the above sources in your blog post
– Plan at least 2-3 shoots as a response to the above where you explore your ideas in-depth.
– Edit shoots and show experimentation with different adjustments/ techniques/ processes in Lightroom/ Photoshop
– Reflect and evaluate each shoot afterwards with thoughts on how to refine and modify your ideas i.e. experiment with images in Lightroom/Photoshop, re-visit idea, produce a new shoot, what are you going to do differently next time? How are you going to develop your ideas?